“In the Solar system, scientists have discovered a new dwarf planet”

26.02.2016

About the discovery of a new dwarf planet orbiting the Sun, astronomers said, representing the American space Agency NASA. The site is called KH162 2015.

photo: morguefile.com

According to the planetary scientists who first discovered it Chad Trujillo, Scott Sheppard and David Tolen, the detected object is in the Kuiper belt — the Solar system located beyond the orbit of Neptune and contains a large number of small phone 2015 KH162 rotates along the orbit, passing at a distance of about 9.3 billion miles from the Sun, that is approximately two times farther from our star than Pluto. A year it runs a little less than 500 worldly years. Diameter of a celestial body, as expected, ranging from 400 to 800 kilometers.

Dwarf planet was discovered in may last year with the help of located in Hawaii the Keck telescope, but they needed some time to test and Refine the data obtained.

Previously it was known about five properties, similar KH162 2015. Four of these dwarf planets are also located in the Kuiper belt — among the most well-known of Pluto is Haumea, and Eris Makemake. Another dwarf planet, Ceres is in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter by astronomers of considerable interest after it was launched the space probe Dawn.

The discovery of a new dwarf planet was not the only step in the way of study of astronomers “nearest” environment of the Earth — recently astronomers from the Paris Observatory was able to figure out more specifically where professionals should look for so-called “planet X”, a hypothetical ninth planet of the Solar system.